CraftRoomArtStudioSalon

As I wrote in my last post (in November...argh), Erik and I moved into a house, which has afforded us a great deal more space than our beloved former apartment. Over the past six months, we've been chipping away at projects around the house. Erik tends to focus on electrical projects (yay for networking the house!). I tend to rearrange, paint, and rearrange again. Surprise! Today's post follows the painting and set up of the Craft Room/Art Studio/Salon. (Erik has chosen to call it "The Salon," which the dramatic part of me enjoys quite a bit.) 

Let's start with some background on our house. Our house is two stories. The first floor contains a living room, kitchen, half bath, dining room, and..."parlor." The people who lived here before us had some random sitting furniture in the "parlor" and some lacy curtains. Also, the walls were seafoam green. I dislike the idea of having a room that is only used on holidays and when you feel the need to sit on the expensive furniture you bought because you bought it. I decided to re-appropriate this room and make it into my office and craft room/art studio. I started with the idea that I wanted the room to be bright, happy, and have an orange wall. You can check out the room's evolution below:

The first step in getting the room ready for painting was to clear  it out. Erik and I had to make several trips upstairs with boxes of craft supplies, which made me wonder how I had accrued so much stuff. I thought about this again when I was unpacking everything...

Next to the "parlor" is a flowery wallpapered dining room. It has a plastic crystal chandelier. Someday it will be painted as well.

The wall you're looking at will be ORANGE in a short while.

Before I painted the walls, I needed to paint the ceiling, which was pretty dingy.  Before I painted the ceiling, I needed to pull the recessed lights out of their sockets and cover them up. I read about how to do this on-line, and managed not to electrocute myself.

This is a rather blurry and unfortunate picture that I want to include because it shows more of the prep. work I did. I taped clear plastic along the baseboards in order to protect the floor. I then covered most of the floor with a canvas tarp.

This picture is much less blurry and unfortunate. It shows the supplies I used: Sponges and a bucket to clean the walls; spackle and wood filler to fix the many holes in the walls and woodwork; paint caulk to fill in gaps in the woodwork; rollers, paintbrushes, paint stirrers, primer, and ceiling paint. Missing from this picture are painter's tape and sandpaper. If you want your walls to look flat and, well, nice, you will need to sand them. A lot. .

This picture displays the finished painted ceiling and the beginning of my spackling work.

I spackled many, many holes, and also sanded and re-sanded areas in which the former tenants of our home had done a lousy painting job. There is no reason to brush paint onto the middle of a wall when you can roll it on. NO reason.

Though the paint I used contained primer, I decided to prime all of the walls beforehand  as a safeguard against former tenant wall goo seeping through the lovely "bleached slate" color I had chosen for three of the walls.

In this picture, you can see the painted "bleached slate" wall against the wall that will be orange. Also, all of the brown woodwork was primed and painted after I finished with the walls.

Orange wall!!!! The baseboard and window are not yet painted.

EVERYTHING painted. Even the window. It was a nice feeling.

We need to stop here for a moment because the next set of pictures address the second stage of the craft room/art studio/salon. My good friends, Scott and Erica, told me about some furniture that Scott's parents were trying to get rid of--specifically a large dresser. I had been on the hunt since before we moved to locate some kind of hutch or shelving unit in which to keep the majority of my craft supplies. I went to see the dresser, and it was perfect. Oh, and FREE, which made it even more perfect. I repainted and changed the hardware on the dresser to give it an update.

Scott's parents had had this dresser for 40 years! It is solid wood and full of drawers. Again, perfect.

This is the hutch that goes with the dresser. I ended up removing the mirror from the hutch  so that I could use the space to store more supplies.

Before I could paint the dresser, I needed to sand it. YAYYYYY.

After I finished painting the dresser and the hutch, I worked on the drawers.

Huzzah! It's finished. In typical Chrissy fashion, I decided to put the dresser against the orange wall after I took this picture. Erik is a good sport and helped me move it.

Desk assemblage came next, with a bit of updating to the desk. I covered the flat part of the desk with fabric and attached cork circles to the side of the shelves so that I would have extra space to hang pictures and doo-dads and whatnot.

Now the unpacking begins. How did I acquire so much stuff??!

More unpacking and organizing...

And then....FINISHED! 

Also, I bought an awesome chaise lounge for lounging and crafting and drinking coffee on.

Desk all set up. I'm storing my yarn in the white boxes, which is a much better system than the basket family I was using.

Everything is PUT AWAY. I'm enjoying it.

So that's the story of how the craft room came together. Since I finished, I've been doing some sewing, crocheting, and thinking about what I'll do next.

Moving and General Whackiness

Greetings Soul Glue followers! It has been about six months since my last post--far, far, FAR too long. In short, Erik and I decided to buy a house and move. When you have about 18 tons of craft supplies, as well as cat accouterments, movies, and dishes to pack, you're busy. The summer was spent packing up the apartment. Early fall was spent moving from the apartment into the house. The remainder of fall has been spent painting, cleaning, raking, and painting. So far, we've completely repainted the master bedroom and kitchen. (When I find the camera, I will post some before and after pictures.) We're settling into the house, as are the cats. I've become a bit addicted to using our fireplace. I actually think it was an old addiction that had gone dormant due to apartment living for several years.

Despite the great move of 2012, I have managed to dabble a bit in crafts. Mostly, I've been crocheting an afghan inspired by a pin on Pinterest, to which I am also now addicted. I posted a post about my Pinterest page a while ago, but here is the link, if you're interested. I've gone bananas with craft related pins.

I think I'll keep this entry short for today. Here are pictures of my cats looking like cyborgs:

How to Grow a Collage Garden

Life has been busy up in Soul Glue land with crafting, taking pictures of crafts, and website-making. If you have ever noted the link to the right--yep, that sexy website link that offers even more Soul Glue--then you've taken a look at my under construction website. If you click on that link now, you will discover a much developed Soul Glue website with lots of pictures and workable links and other wonderful things that you can see on websites. Below are a few sample pictures from the website that will tempt you to go look at more pictures:

I planted some collage seeds and they grew into these fabulous postcards. Ask me how!

My lovely friend Sarah graciously posed with this yoga mat bag on a day when she was packing up to move from her house no less.

The pictures of these baskets were a labor of love. While toting them around our building to find neat places to take pictures, I fell off of our front steps and skinned my knee. I felt like I was ten years old again. My accident didn't stop me, though. I stuck a bandaid on the knee, kept on with the pictures, and managed not to get any blood on the bowls. Phew.

As for general craft projects I have been working on, I finished crocheting a new yoga mat bag yesterday morning. Below are pictures of the finished product:

 

Terrariums-ho!

Last month, I read an article in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine about a book titled The New Terrarium, and I was immediately intrigued. I had never made a terrarium before, but the idea of placing plants and objects within a glass container sounded like a fun project. Yesterday, I invited a few friends over for a terrarium making adventure. We decided to make succulent terrariums, which seemed a bit less challenging to maintain. Combining directions from a few websites (Offbeat Bride, BirdHouse, Martha Stewart) we created a lovely array of terrariums for your viewing pleasure. First, here's a brief description of the supplies we used and what we did:

Supplies:
Cactus Mix Soil (found at Lowe's)
Pebbles or small rocks (also found at Lowe's)
A variety of succulent plants (Lowe's again)
Sheet moss (you guessed it: Lowe's)
Glass container with wide opening (HAHA! Not found at Lowe's! We went to the Christmas Tree Shop for this purchase. If you are not fortunate to live near a Tree, you can get a suitable container from a craft store, Salvation Army, or anywhere else you can think of that sells glass containers.)
Gardening gloves
Funky stones, random objects (these will help jazz up the terrarium)

Directions:
1. Fill the bottom of your glass container with 2-2.5 inches of pebbles.
2. Pour dirt into your container until it is about halfway full.
3. Go crazy arranging your succulents, funky objects, and moss!
4. Water your terrarium until the soil is moist.
5. Gaze at your creation!

Now here's the pictures of our terrariums...

We ran out of daylight by the time we finished, which made taking decent pictures a bit challenging. However, these terrariums still look gorgeous and they were lots of fun to make!

The inside of one of Kerri's terrariums. We voted her the #1 Terrarium Super Star!

Another view. We have some Sarah, Alex, and Emily in this picture.

 

 

One of the terrariums I made in daylight.

Inside view.

Another terrarium by moi in the daylight.

The over-the-top view. I included a porcelain ball in my design to change things up a bit.

Thumbs up for the aftermath!

Earring Trees for Lovely Earrings

I LOVE earrings. Truly. They are by far my favorite accessory. Until about four years ago, I used a butterfly earring tree that had been passed down to me from my sisters. At some point, I realized that the poor butterfly had become laden with too many earrings. Resourceful and somewhat impulsive, I found an old picture frame and purchased a piece of wire mesh that one would use in a screen door. I whipped the two together and had a new home for my earrings. Sadly, this creation has not survived the test of time.


Above, a profile view of said busted earring tree with cat toy and flip flip in background.

To the left, a front view of said busted earring tree with earrings placed much too close for comfort.

So, what to do? Make a new earring tree! I've been thinking about using a shadow box frame instead of a tabletop frame, as it would provide more structure and less wobbliness. I went out to Joanne Fabrics, picked up a new frame, on sale no less, and got crafting. Official steps are below.



Shadow Box Earring Tree

Materials:
Shadow box frame, any size (This really depends upon how large you want your earring tree to be. I chose a frame that is 10"x10".)
Wire mesh (I purchased a roll of this stuff at Lowes for about $7 and now I will be making earring trees for everyone ever--which is okay because I like to do it. If you don't want to do that, go to a smaller hardware store where you can usually buy smaller pieces.)
Hot glue
Paper for the background of the box
Scissors (Try to use a pair you don't care about too much. Cutting the mesh will dull the scissors somewhat.)
Mod Podge
Foam brush
Sharpie

Directions:

1. Take apart the shadow box and set all pieces aside except cardboard insert included with box.

2. Measure the piece of paper or picture that you chose for the background of the box against the cardboard insert. Trim off edges.

3. Glue the piece of paper to the cardboard with the Mod Podge and the foam brush. Set all aside.

4. Unroll a decent-sized piece of wire mesh. Lay the piece of glass from the shadow box on top of the mesh.

5. Trace around the piece of glass with a sharpie. Lay something underneath the mesh as you trace! Do NOT make the mistake I did in the above picture and then scramble to scrub sharpie from the floor.

6. Remove piece of glass and cut along traced lines.

7. Place piece of mesh against the inside front of the shadow box frame. Apply hot glue to all edges of the mesh.

My earrings are still a bit crowded. Good thing I have excess wire mesh to make another tree!

8. Put the frame back together again without the glass. Hang your earrings in the frame. Yay! Look what you made!

A Home for Paper Flowers

As I mentioned late last month, I've been working on cleaning the office in our apartment. In order to make room in a closet for a stack of records, I had to relocate a box of unfinished paper flowers. These flowers have quite a history. Basically, I went crazy about the decorations for my wedding. Erik and I were married at the Fuller Craft Museum. Subsequently, I decided that I wanted the decorations for our wedding to have a crafty feel. I researched every different kind of paper flower I could find on the internet, in books, by word of mouth--anything. I found directions for origami flowers and began making about a million of them to put together in bouquets for table centerpieces. A few months into this endeavor, I realized that I probably would not have enough time, even with the extraordinary help of my friends, to make ten bouquets. I settled on another paper flower idea, which still took quite some time, but made more sense for the centerpieces. I ended up making an origami flower bouquet for the table where Erik and I sat at the wedding.

Wreath for guest centerpiece

Snazz centerpiece for me & Erik

Months later, I still have about a million origami petals and flowers to use up. They were living in above said box in said closet. This weekend, I decided that I would make a new container for these petals that I could look at on a daily basis in my living room. I've wanted to make a basket from magazine pages since I saw a picture of one in The Big Ass Book of Crafts. If you're interested in looking at specific directions for how to make this basket, and for general crafty joy, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of The Big Ass Book of Crafts. Below is a description of how I made my basket.

To begin, I cut magazine pages from two Martha Stewart Living magazines into thirds. You can use any magazine you want. I just happened to have these on hand. The pages are nice and wide, too, so you get more strips from them.

Next, I grabbed a bamboo skewer from our utensil drawer. I picked up a paper strip and, starting at a corner, rolled the paper around the skewer until I made a straw shape.

I used Sobo Craft Glue to glue the last corner around the straw.

I then flattened the straw. Smoosh!

After flattening the straw, I wrapped it tightly around a pencil.

Holding the now curled straw, I slid it off the pencil and allowed it to loosen a bit. I then hot glued the end of the straw to the newly made ring.

I made probably about 600 of these rings. I watched a lot of Grey's Anatomy while doing this. You can watch whatever show you like while making these. It should not be something that requires you actually pay attention, though.

I chose a decent sized trashcan as a form to place the rings around. I hot glued the rings together starting at the base of the trashcan.

I went around and around the trashcan gluing the rings together. More Grey's Anatomy was watched.

For the bottom of the basket, I hot glued many, many more flat straws in a spiral until it was the correct size. I removed the trashcan from the center of the rings and glued the rings to the spiral. I painted Mod Podge on the inside of the basket to help hold it together.

Here is a rather shadowy picture of the finished basket!

Here is a more colorful picture of the inside of the basket.

So far, it has held together pretty well. I haven't picked it up and swung it around, and I try to carry it by the base. It fits all of the flower petals, and it is quite pleasing to the eye. I'm already thinking of the next one I'll make!